Detweiler, Craig, and Barry Taylor. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2003. 351 pp., $17.99 (USD). ISBN: 0-8010-2417-X.
[1] Can traces of the sacred be detected in the wastelands of contemporary
commercial culture? Does the apparent "re-enchantment" of
Western culture represent anything more than a decadent flirtation
with obsolete spiritualities? Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor’s
provocative study is an exuberant evaluation of what Douglas Coupland
memorably named our “accelerated culture.” As the spiritually
ambitious subtitle of A Matrix of Meanings suggests, its
authors find holy possibilities in unexpected sources. Detweiler
and Taylor–both of whom combine university or seminary teaching
posts with parallel vocations in the creative arts–represent
a sanguine alternative to the rather gloomy construal of popular
culture offered by other theologians of the postmodern. In True
Religion (2003), for example, Graham Ward, a leading voice in
the “Radical Orthodoxy” movement (a group of Anglican
and Catholic theologians), claims that the appropriation of sacred
imagery in pop culture reduces religion to a banal and depthless “special
effect.” He concludes that in our globalized, desire-driven
economy religion and consumerism are inseparable. Detweiler
and Taylor, by contrast, insist that even a rapaciously materialistic
culture is littered by signs of grace and echoes with the sounds
of a perennial quest for the divine: “We’re here
to confirm what we all inherently sense–that something big,
brash, and shockingly spiritual is happening” (17). The “rumours
of glory” that the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn
once ruminated on are found by these daring theologians in every
conceivable irreligious space: noir thriller and MTV,
catwalks, and rap videos, for example, are all regarded as potential
sources of revelation.
[2] A Matrix of Meanings runs counter to assumptions regarding
the primacy of Christian- sanctioned culture. This will not be news
to those restless spiritual seekers who have already rejected institutional
religion. However, it might represent a radical reassessment for
others who retain a fairly orthodox faith but are frustrated by
the aesthetic limitations of their tradition. There are significant
precedents in the field: Eric Mazur and Kate McCarthy’s edited
collection God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture (2001),
for example, provides a more scholarly, rather more focused account
of contemporary spiritual practice via culture and the arts. Tom
Beaudoin’s Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest
of Generation X (2000), frequently cited in this book, is a
crucial influence and, like Beaudoin, Detweiler and Taylor are fascinated
by the "amniotic fluid" of music videos, fashion, and
art as a surrogate for traditional sacred spaces. Individual
chapters focus on advertising, celebrity, music, and television,
for example, and the book reflects the ascendancy of the image in
contemporary culture by omitting substantial reference to literature.
[3] The co-authors draw on a methodology that “reverses the
hermeneutical flow” pioneered by Larry Kreizer’s theological–primarily
Pauline–readings of film: “We construct our theology
through a pop cultural matrix, allowing pop culture to speak for
itself before we apply biblical interpretation” (10). The
book does not diminish scriptural authority–indeed more sceptical
readers may find the frequent biblical quotations distracting–but
wisely argues that the ways in which the Bible is read cannot be
divorced from the creative noise of the Zeitgeist. The writers
do not make a fetish of contemporary culture (“Modernism isn’t
the enemy. Postmodernism isn’t the solution” [24]),
but the book does lack a sense of the distinction between different
genres and vocabularies of cultural expression. Cultural theorists
such as Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard
are referenced without recourse to unhelpful philosophical jargon.
Yet a clearer sense of a theoretical framework would have made this
a still stronger contribution to the field. Similarly, the authors
might have followed up the negative associations of their claim
that “[p]op culture shapes who we are and who we’re
becoming” (20). Is this always desirable and are there ways
of resisting the extremes of an overbearing pop culture?
[4] A Matrix of Meanings certainly reflects the
chaotic, information-dazed atmosphere of the age. Detweiler and
Taylor argue that “[p]ostmodernity cuts and pastes, scans
and surfs . . . We’re interactive and interrelated, practicing
a different form of thinking” (34). The writers’ swift
movement between ideas and images with multiple illustrations from
any and every area of pop culture is both blessing and curse. Their
mischievously catholic approach to the postmodern creative impulse–whether
aesthetically innovative or crassly commercial–is impressive
and the range of reference astonishing (the index contains more
than 1600 entries). However, the readings of individual texts are
too impatient to be genuinely useful. Like those who spend too much
time on-line, I suspect that many readers will be left rather disorientated
by the confusion of names and reference points.
[5] At the close of the twentieth century, Peter Berger rejected
secularization and affirmed that the world was as “furiously
religious” as ever. In A Matrix of Meanings, Detweiler
and Taylor define a series of creative ways in which this pluralist, “furiously
religious” culture can be negotiated. Their emphasis, inflected
by the ostensibly materialist disciplines of cultural studies and
sociology, is on new ways of encountering the mysteries of faith: “We
must rethink, reform, reinvent, and reimagine the gospel for the
times in which we live” (296). For people of faith discouraged
by the absence of imaginative potential in their church, this book
will present an energizing resource; for sceptics convinced that
Christianity is sustained only by a retreat to conservative thought, A
Matrix of Meanings might embody an illuminating alternative
story of spirituality and the postmodern moment.
Andrew Tate
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
a.tate@lancaster.ac.uk
